Greetings.
And now for today’s selection of religious fallacies:
Judaism, overlapping with Christianity:
“Christianity can be true even if Judaism is false.” (Misconception Charles Darwin had serious trouble with)
“Delilah cut Samson’s hair.” (Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad, a Christian calendar depicting Biblical scenes with naked people in them)
“It is OK to jointly celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas or add Christmas practices to Hanukkah.” (Assimilationist American Jews)
“Jesus qualified as the Jewish Messiah.” (Christianity)
“Jews do not convert to Christianity because Christians have been so cruel to them.” (Martin Luther)
“Judaism has the same values as Christianity except it doesn’t hold by belief in Jesus as the Messiah.” (Popular American misconception)
“Messianic Judaism is Judaism.” (Christian missionary lie)
“Since the names of the persons of the Trinity can be translated into Hebrew, the Trinity is a Jewish concept.” (Idiot on-line)
“The English are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes.” (Anglo-Israelites)
“The Jews of the Bible were Africans.” (Taxi driver in New York City during the 1990s)
“The name of the queen who visited Solomon was ‘Sheba’.” (Popular American misconception)
Names of Christian groups and movements:
“Baptists” (John the Baptist was not a member of this group. Furthermore, they have no monopoly on baptism.)
“Evangelicals” (They have no monopoly on the Gospel (Evangelion).)
“Pentecostals” (They have no monopoly on the holiday of Pentecost.)
“The Catholic Church” (“Catholic” means “universal”. If so, it ought to be the only church.)
Christianity:
“Christians are cannibals.” (Romans)
“Divorce is permissible.” (Protestants)
“Jesus spoke the English of the King’s James Bible.” (Ignorant Christians)
“Jesus was a Christian.” (Ignorant Christians)
“Jesus was born on Christmas.”
“Jesus was well-known in his own time.”
“Quotes from the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament are quoted as written and in context.”
“We can rely on The Da Vinci Code.”
Enjoy, good month, and happy Hanukkah.
Aaron
3 comments:
“The Jews of the Bible were black.”
Difficult to test, especially since with a little interbreeding appearance may be wildly subject to change. Jews in many places do look somewhat like the surrounding peoples. It is unlikely because most of the major Jewish groups (Ashkenazzi, Sfardi, Yemenite) are known to be closely related to Arabs, both of which look more or less white; the Ethiopian Jews appear to be largely descendents of converts, though there is also evidence of some Middle-Eastern ancestry in them. It's possible but not the most likely scenario.
A related claim, that Jesus specifically was black, is a bit more plausible. Judaism accepts converts, and aside from the Ethiopian Jews (many generations in now), there are plenty of converts who happen to be black. It is possible that he was a convert or a descendent thereof.
One additional note: One place in the Bible makes reference to the impossiblity of an Ethiopian changing his skin. This probably means that whoever wrote this passage was not an Ethiopian nor looked like one. If the author was black or came from a society that was largely black, he would have most likely have written something about another group changing their unusual skin color, such as Europeans. (Interestingly, Japhetites CAN change their skin color, but only at risk of skin cancer.)
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